Fumbling my way into a new year

I packed up Christmas early this year. Unhooked the ornaments from the tree, took the jingly wooden Santa off the doorknob, removed my daughter’s stained-glass Christmas tree, the one she made in middle school, from its special spot in the kitchen window over the sink. I stored the mementos, glass bulbs, and Christmas lights neatly in the basement, with the kind of efficiency I often attribute to spring cleaning or washing my car. Things I have to do, but offer little pleasure, so I do them as quickly as possible.

I didn’t even spend much time decorating the tree this year. My daughter did it for me, one snowy afternoon while I was napping on the couch. I would have been happy to help, but I’m glad she took over this year. My heart was not into it. It wasn’t my only festive absence. The nutcrackers that usually adorn my mantel stayed stashed in plastic bins. One small, half-dying poinsettia sat on my dining room table. The season just seemed flat, like champagne without a tight cork, promising a celebratory zeal but delivering something far less.

I knew in early December, as I put tiny wreaths on the front windows of my house, that I was searching for the Christmas spirit and coming up short. I tried to rally. I wrapped presents with sparklier bows. I gave to more charitable organizations. I emptied my pockets for the grocery-store bell ringers. I handed out homemade Christmas cookies to a wider variety of neighbors and friends. I soaked in the anticipation of the two little girls who live across the street as they counted down to Christmas day with glistening eyes.

But the fact remains: Despite a year filled with good health and relative happiness, 2017 is a year that I can’t wait to leave behind. I have no real grievances to count. Not like my junior year in high school when my Mom came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve with a fresh mastectomy, and I was terrified she might die. Not like the Christmas that I had to tell my daughter that her father and I were divorcing after 26 years of marriage. And certainly not like when our family was forced to stare down the holidays the first year after my ex-husband’s suicide.

Which is a long way of saying, I’ve had far worse years. In strict accounting terms, 2017 wasn’t half bad. I stuck to a better diet and lost weight. I shared a long lazy week on Lake Ontario with my extended family and they are all healthy and well. My niece and her husband are expecting a baby, the first in that generation, and our family is ecstatic about the new arrival. I traveled more than usual to visit friends. I dodged numerous layoffs at the company I work for, and a new tax bill promises to leave more money in my paycheck next year.

And still the uneasiness remains. It permeates my consciousness like the subzero cold that has gripped Northern New England this holiday season. I can’t warm to the chill. And this chill is multi-pronged: emotional, psychological, maybe even spiritual.

I feel like I’m in mourning, and I can’t quite shake it. Because despite my wanting to close the door on 2017, I fear that 2018 won’t be a whole lot different. Celebrating the new year feels like a hoax. We’ll still be living in a polarized American society in which it’s difficult to have honest conversations about what really matters to us. And we’ll still be led by a man who is crass and unpredictable and lacks the moral authority that the position demands.

Worse yet, I can’t share this deep distress with virtually half the nation because they simply don’t see things the way I do. Where they see smaller government, I see the cementing of the haves and have-nots. Where they see regulatory reforms that help businesses prosper, I see an assault on our environment and citizen protections. Where they see fake news, I see the last, best hope for truth in a civilized society. I pray that we can at least agree on the inappropriate behavior of the man in the oval office when he berates and belittles anyone he choses with a quick tweet.

Hours from the new year, I’m still searching for the spirit of the season. To believe. To have faith. I want to breathe it in deeply as sustenance against the onslaught of the frantic, uncertain governance that marked 2017 and will likely launch 2018.

Mine is a simple quest for unity, not of policies, but of the national spirit. This usually requires a leader who knows how to—and wants to—unite his people. In lieu of this, we are left with a humbling responsibility as individual citizens: to know when to listen and when to speak up in the service of essential discourse that arcs toward peace.

As the holiday season winds down with no real respite to the ongoing agitation in sight, I feel depleted. And yet I look to the future with what loosely resembles hope. Because it’s human … and daunting … and frightening … and necessary.

It's a new year. Anything is possible.

Corralling the chaos without losing your mind

I woke Wednesday morning, like I do most mornings, with two conflicting gravitational pulls. Should I check the news and listen to pundits dissect the president’s tweets and congressional antics? Or should I take a break from the cultural chaos and amble around the house, double check my Christmas lists, and count how many tins I can re-use for this year’s cookie deliveries.

On this morning, the news found me. I woke to NPR reporting that NBC’s “Today” show anchor Matt Lauer had been fired for sexual harassment. If I’d chosen to stay away from the news that morning, I still couldn’t have avoided this particular bombshell. My daughter texted me on her way to work, “Matt Lauer gone!!” She’s recently been texting me each time a prominent man is accused of (and usually fired for) sexual misconduct. It’s become an all-too-frequent exchange. Later the same day, she texted, “Garrison Keillor?!?”

This was just the daily dose of sexual harassment news, which could occupy its own cable channel these days. But the 24-hour news cycle had just begun. Also that morning, President Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos from an extremist organization in the U.K., known primarily as a racist hate group. The validity of at least one of the videos was quickly called into question. But the anti-Muslim sentiment Trump conveyed was clear — and deeply disturbing to Republicans and Democrats alike, not to mention our closest international ally. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May wasted no time with her response, “It is wrong for the president to have done this.” 

Later the same day, the tax bill passed a critical milestone in the U.S. Senate, clearing the way for a vote on a bill that will hand more money to the wealthy and balloon the deficit. It will also remove a key pillar of Obamacare, sending the Affordable Care Act reeling into a steeper downward spiral. A swelling deficit will likely be followed by a call to gut Medicare and Social Security. These are not inconsequential impacts for most Americans. But the unpopular bill is being hastily rammed through the Senate in what appears to be a political move fueled by the Republicans need to score a legislative win and appease donors. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) confirmed this motivation, saying that "financial contributions will stop" if the GOP fails to deliver corporate tax cuts. Oh, did I mention that North Korea launched a test to prove its missile ranges now extend as far as Washington, D.C. Or did that news tidbit break the day before?

It’s exhausting. There is not enough yoga, meditation, or long walks in the woods to keep me from feeling anxious and overwhelmed. One of my friends put it beautifully when she posted a link to a story on the dismantling of the State Department’s foreign service. Her post read simply, “For those with the bandwidth to consider yet another crisis.”

It’s hard not to bury our heads in the sand. Mimicking our polarized society, there’s a binary approach to deal with the cascading chaos. Some of us choose to engage with the news full on by seeking multiple credible sources in an attempt to find the truth. That is, if we still believe in the truth and have the energy to pursue it. Or we choose to avoid the news completely and let only the most critical of news events bubble to the surface through friends or the stray Internet post.

But social media doesn’t seem like a good way to siphon news. I remember in college, the only news that made its way to our electronically deprived dorm one semester was that Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane had crashed. I doubt this was the most newsworthy event that took place during those few months. But for our subculture (college-age kids fairly obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll), it was an important, possibly critical, piece of information.

It reminds me of our news landscape now. We’ve retreated into our subgroups and each little tribe decides what’s important to them and clings to it, holding it to the light as a filter through which they view the world. The difference is that college kids know they are in a bubble that at some point will burst, dropping them into the real world filled with jobs, family, and other responsibilities. But our American political subcultures keep digging in with a vengeance, tunneling away from those who disagree with them. Leaving a maze of disconnected Americans.

I wish I could look away from our cultural train wreck. But I can’t remove myself from the fray and be the citizen I want to be. There are people to talk with about the political issues that matter and opposing voices I need to understand. Bearing witness is the least I can do. It’s the best I can do. For now, it has to be enough to be informed, armed with the truth, and ready for action.

#MeToo meets the military and it ain't pretty

I don’t even remember his name. Though he was someone on the periphery of my friend group. I do remember the heart-pumping shock of being thrown to the ground. Of struggling to push him off me. His breath smelled of the cheap beer that was flowing at a spring-fling event at the community college in Watertown, New York, where I’d spent freshman year.

We were on a path in the woods, just off the main field where most people were gathered. It was not a remote, untraveled path. No one happened to be nearby at that moment. I wriggled, I flailed, I yelled. The 70s rock music—I think it was a live band—drowned out my cries.

I eventually escaped. My relentless fighting and his drunken sloppiness combined to fuel my getaway. I patted the dirt and debris off my jeans and shirt. Picked at the dried leaves and pointy twigs in my hair. Walked off with an attempt at sterling posture because that’s what good girls are taught. Pretend it didn’t happen. Look unscathed. I mean, I wasn’t raped, was I? I re-entered the crowd with its inviting sounds of easy laughter and friendly voices. All I wanted to do was blend in, be safe again. I told my best friend what had happened. Felt lucky. I’d avoided true harm.

Not long after, I went out with friends to a local disco bar named Twilight 22. The dress I was wearing fell just below my knees and had a double-slit skirt made for twirling on the dance floor. As I was standing next to a boyfriend at the edge of the small dance floor, several men behind me lifted the back panel of my skirt. One grabbed the slit on the left side; another yanked the slit on the right. They peeled me.

I turned around to laughing faces. They had the short haircuts and indifferent attitudes that gave every appearance of being soldiers from Fort Drum, a local Army base. I’d learned to spot them young. These were the kind of soldiers my parents warned me about ever since I could remember; the ones eager to show the flip side of valor to local girls they’d never see again. (My father, a five-year veteran of World War II, was a reliable source in such matters.) Embarrassed and ashamed, I simply moved away to another part of the dance floor, which seemed less saturated with groups of men holding beers at rakish angles.

I’ve been reliving these stories the past week, along with dozens of more insidious, less vivid ones that center on heckling, groping, and leers—the run-of-the-mill harassment that comes with being female in America in the late 20th and early 21st century. Despite the appearance of women “having it all,” or possibly because of it, nasty comments and subversive attitudes are never far away. If you are female and have escaped these behaviors, lucky you. But the legions of #MeToo posts on my social media feeds throughout the last week indicate that most women of virtually every age know exactly how this feels.

Sharing these experiences as part of a global community of women felt important. Hearing men on my social feeds say they took our messages to heart, felt significant too. This meant they heard us, believed us, didn’t question us, and wanted to change the culture.

Then came chief of staff John Kelly, who marched through the #MeToo campaign with a machete. In the White House briefing room, from a position of power, he inserted himself into the controversy surrounding President Trump’s remarks to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four serviceman killed in Niger. Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL), a family friend who was traveling with Johnson, heard the conversation on speakerphone and made public statements about Trump's clumsy remarks to the grieving widow. Myeshia Johnson, six months pregnant with the couple’s third child, later confirmed Wilson’s account of the conversation and said that the president’s comments made her cry even worse.

Most presidents would have cleared up this controversy quickly, taken ownership for the miscommunication, and offered a heartfelt apology to the widow of a fallen soldier. But that’s not Trump’s style. He engaged in a Twitter war with Wilson, then deployed General Kelly for a battle round, trading on the chief of staff’s personal experience of losing a child in service to our country.

Kelly has undeniable qualifications on this topic. His perspective was meant to clear the air while providing cover to Trump for the president’s less-than-perfect condolences. But an emotional Kelly made some critical missteps from the press podium. He lied about Wilson’s remarks at the dedication of a FBI building in Florida and accused her of politicizing a Gold Star family’s grief (when it was Trump who'd started this particular war, commenting on how previous presidents handled communications with the families of fallen soldiers). Kelly, known as a man of integrity, made a blatant attempt to discredit Wilson whom he referred to as an “empty barrel.”

Here’s what I took away from Kelly’s remarks: he didn’t believe a woman’s version of events and he intentionally dishonored her by spreading falsehoods. At the pinnacle of the #MeToo campaign, it was a smackdown.

Kelly, ironically, went on to lament the good ole days in which women were treated as sacred. As he put it: “You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases.”

Kelly had just confused everyone, as he smeared a female member of Congress for aggrandizement, while absolving a president who has a track record of disrespect for women.

The battle lines were set up to squelch the female perspective. On one side were two powerful men: Trump and Kelly. On the other side, were three women: Myeshia Johnson, Rep. Wilson, and Cowanda Jones-Johnson, La David's aunt, who'd also heard Trump's call and confirmed its tone and content. Kelly could have met the women at least halfway, honoring their feelings and judgment, but that did not seem to be an option. There appeared to be an instinct to slur and silence them.

During a week in which the #MeToo sisterhood emerged like a resurfacing submarine from the dark recesses of society, Kelly’s comments about women were tone deaf. The millions of oral histories unleashed by the #MeToo campaign were often decades old, proving that there were no “good ole days” to be a woman in America. Kelly’s attempt to rewrite history as most women know it felt like a betrayal.

While most of us will never understand what it feels like to be the parent of a fallen soldier, Kelly seems unaware of the threats that women in America face, and have likely always faced. Nor does he understand what modern women really want. Being treated as sacred has never been the point. Women want respect, to be treated as equals. To be honored as friends, partners, colleagues, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. In this case, to be believed for telling the truth—wasn’t that what the #MeToo campaign was all about?

We can also handle the truth, and this administration should start telling it more often about topics that matter. For starters, American women would like to know why are we fighting in Niger? How did these four servicemen lose their lives? Where are the other military hotspots in the world that we should know more about, and what are the risks?

Many of us expected so much more from General Kelly. Because a man of honor knows when to admit he made a mistake. It’s not too late for him to restore lost credibility. He would be wise to make a public apology to the American people for his misstatements about Rep. Wilson. He should also make a private, personal phone call to Myeshia Johnson to express his deepest condolences and apologize for the added stress she's been forced to endure. Without taking responsibility for his missteps, he uses his own position of power to slash and burn women to make his administration look good. Feels just like old times.